Some might view books like The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film as big, expensive brochures for upcoming movies, but for me they’ve always provided a fascinating glimpse into the process of bringing these large-scale extravaganzas to our screens. Even when they come from the kind of rich source material of, say, an eight-book series written by Stephen King, there’s a lot of designing and refining that goes into the look of a movie like The Dark Tower. This volume gives us a glimpse of that, but I’ll confess that it left me wanting much, much more.Continue Reading

I was fortunate enough to see The Dark Tower on Tuesday evening at the Bangor Mall Cinemas 10, an event sponsored by Zone Radio. The audience was filled with people who won tickets from the station. In addition to getting a chance to see the film early, attendees also won some King-related merchandise as door prizes, including Dark Tower novel sets, audio books and signed ARCs of the final three volumes in the series. Dark Tower t-shirts were flung into the audience, too.Continue Reading

Robin Furth doesn’t live in Mid-World, but it could be argued she knows it better than the characters themselves. After working as Stephen King’s research assistant, Furth published Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Concordance, has written the graphic novel adaptations of The Dark Tower series for Marvel Comics, and is a consultant for the new film The Dark Tower and the TV series that will follow. As an avid folklorist, a fan of comics and King’s own go-to expert on all things Roland Deschain, Furth is the perfect person for all these jobs. She spoke to Cemetery Dance Online about her books, graphic fiction as a medium, and what she thinks about the upcoming movie and Idris Elba as the lead.Continue Reading

In March, 2012, while I was writing The Dark Tower Companion, I spoke with Akiva Goldsman about his plans to adapt the Dark Tower series with Ron Howard. Clearly things have changed significantly in the past five years, but his thoughts at the time show where he was coming from and might indicate where the adaptations could be headed. As we anticipate this week’s release of The Dark Tower, enjoy this excerpt from that interview.Continue Reading

Ka Like a Wheel, Time Like a Circle
by Kevin Quigley

The notion of circular time is ancient. Hebrew interpretation of the Bible forwards the concept of “cycles,” of time moving in a loop like the orbits of the planets or the sweep of the hands of a clock. The Rolling Stones mention the concept in their song “Sway,” from the album Sticky Fingers: “Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind / Destroyed your notion of circular time / It’s just that demon life has got you in its sway.”Continue Reading